Re: [Cbor] Map keys?

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

On Apr 29, 2019, at 15:39, Felipe Gasper <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I’m looking at RFC 8392, which says:
> 
> ——-
> In JSON, maps are called objects and only have one kind of map key: a string. CBOR uses strings, negative integers, and unsigned integers as map keys. 

Well, it doesn’t say “and nothing else” :-)
RFC 8392 is not intended to update RFC 7049, anyway.

> The integers are used for compactness of encoding and easy comparison. The inclusion of strings allows for an additional range of short encoded values to be used.
> ——-
> 
> While this doesn’t directly say per se that CBOR _only_ uses strings and integers as map keys, the implication seems strong. I don’t see any such limitation in the CBOR RFC.
> 
> Does CBOR intend, then, to restrict map keys to only major types 0, 1, and 3?

There is no such intention.

Indeed, major types 0/1 and 3 are the most often used map keys (probably followed by 2).  But there is nothing wrong with 7 (false, true, …), 6 (tagged data), or the containers (4, 5) etc. as map keys.

This may be elucidated a bit more by draft-ietf-cbor-cddl-08.txt (in RFC editor queue), section 2, which distinguishes two kinds of map usage: “structs” (where indeed 0/1 and 3 are usually most convenient), and “tables”, where the ability to use any CBOR data item as a map key is vital.

Grüße, Carsten